PUTTING IN THE PUNCH- idea under plot
PUTTING IN THE PUNCH- idea under plot nothing in script writing is more important than punch,for a plot is essential to the photoplay and the punch is essential to the plot. Punch is the idea back of the narrative. It makes narrative interesting through idea. In this it differs from motivation, which makes for interest through explaining the reason for action. By many punch is regarded as the mechanical effect to which certain type of plays works up. A story is not interesting if it merely works up to a head-on collision. The smash may be interesting because of its physical features, but the mere fact of collision will not be interesting. It is punch in the plot that includes the wreck that makes the latter of plot interest. If there is no punch to the plot it would be better to offer the railroad effect as a news picture and not as a story. The train wreck, the automobile over the cliff, the leap for life and kindred sensations do not give punch to plot. They seek to excuse the lack. They seek to conceal the lack. They cannot sup.- ply the want. Before proceeding to study punch, master this fact. Nothing but punch can be put into plot to make plot interesting. No amount of mechanical sensation can do more than relieve boredom for a moment. If the mechanical effect is used to back up a story with punch and the effect is a part of the story and not an interpolation, then it may make a story more interesting because it is a part of a story, but the interpolated sensation will not become a part of the story and will not give it interest. A handsome though unsafe building may be shored up with timbers. The timbers do not become a part of the building. They do not add beauty or give the building itself strength. They are unsightly and merely serve to prevent the structure from falling completely flat. To make a good building the walls must be strengthened and repaired. Shoring is merely a temporary and disfiguring device. Narrative of a plot is merely the recital of the incidents relating to the plot objective. If the objective is interesting, then the narrative should be interesting. Idea gives interest to the objective. A man falling from an airship may be interesting, but it is not plot. The sight of one man trying to kill another may be exciting, but not of real interest. If we know that the slayer is unwittingly trying to kill his own son, then this ideagives interest to the physical action. It is still exciting, but in a greater degree because now our interest also is engaged. Suppose that you are at the railroad station. A train is just pulling out. A fat little man dashes up in an automobile and gives pursuit. You laugh. It is only human to laugh at the small misfortunes of others, and the man himself is rather funny. Anyhow it is - amusing to see a fat man trying to catch a railroad train because the train has so great an advantage over him. But suppose that you know the man. Suppose you also knew that he wanted the way train and was chasing the Chicago express. Now you put a punch in the idea. A man trying to catch a train is funny. A man vainly pursuing the wrong train is much more so. morous. Now the idea of wasted effort is added to the original: It is doubly funny. You'll laugh when you see him climb aboard his proper train, still puffing and blowing from the result of his chase. If you merely saw him board his train, not having seen the previous chase, you would not even smile. The action would be the same, but there would be no idea back of the action. Your knowledge of what is behind the action is what gives full value to the action. You know the man wanted the suburban train. It is amusing to see him chase the express. You laugh. But if you knew that the man wanted the express; that he was a great physician, hurrying to the bedside of a little child whose life could be saved only by use of the serum which he carries, then the incident becomes tragic. You forget that the action of the man is amusing. You think only of the fact that Death grins from the rear platform of the receding train. By the mere knowledge of what lies back of the action you have turned comedy to absolute tragedy. Slightly change the punch. The man loses the train, but calls out a special. This is the train that runs into the other in the head-on collision referred to above. Now the wreck becomes of interest, not as a wreck, but as part of the obstacle. You can get the same punch from having the physician drop the bottle, but you at least excuse the trains when you make them a part of the story ; a real factor, and not a chance incident of no real bearing. People will see the smash, but they will think of the dying child. The train has not added to the punch, but since it assists in making manifest the obstacle that is made interesting by punch, then there is some excuse for it. Punch is in- variably mental. It is one of the rules to which there is no exception. A young girl becomes engaged to an elderly man. We do not approve the match. We want to see her marry the young man in whom our interest is more strongly engaged. Here we derive-interest in the story from our interest in the young couple. We dislike the sacrifice of youth to age. We do not approve of the roué. The story inter- ests, though the interest is mild. Suppose we know that the old man really is her father. At once the story gains greatly in interest. The action has not changed in the slightest, but idea now makes the action a thing of horror. The girl, unable to bring herself to marry the old man, turns to the boy. It is shown that he is her half-brother, son of her errant mother. Once more the story is strengthened. The action is still unchanged. Idea alone has been added. Punch, then, is not alone idea, but idea which greatly increases the dramatic or comedy value of the plot. Punch is never action, nor does violent action add in the slight- est degree to punch. You cannot strengthen a story with a knife fight or a pistol duel any more than you can build it up with a dynamite ex- plosion. The result of the fight or the consequences of the explosion may add to punch through contribution to the idea, but the action does not affect the story unless it contributes idea to the story. Your story can possess punch only in the degree that physical action is backed by knowledge. Only the mental appeal will give strength to your story. Two men take each a pellet from a pill box. They may be dyspepsia tablets that one unfortunate is inducing the other to try. If you know that one of the tablets is sugar of milk and the other strychnine, then the commonplace situation gains punch. A man at the dinner table rises to carve the turkey. The scene is simple. If you know that he is going to thrust the knife into the breast of his wife and also kill the man who has wrecked his home, then the situation becomes tense with interest. Examples might be multiplied indefinitely. Always it will be found that the thought or the knowledge is what gives interest to the action. Not only does the play as a whole require punch but individual scenes may be made stronger through use of the same device. Each "big" scene should possess its minor punch. There was a time, back around 1910, when punch was not insisted upon. A story was dramatic if a faithless wife was confronted by her husband as she was about to elope. It was 'dramatic if one man shot up another. Gradually there came a demand for stronger stories. Some authors increased the violence, but the more clever put in the punch. These latter are still writing. And each time a story is made it requires a stronger punch to excuse its repetition. If you feel that a plot lacks punch, dissect it and look at it. Use the paragraphic form shown in Chapter IX, which gives you the best survey of the individual factors in your story. In the story of Mary and Ben in the preceding chapter it has been shown how the punch was built into an originally flat play. We might take the same story and work it over with the punch suggested in paragraph eleven of this chapter. As a premise we make a change in our personages. Ben becomes a young minister, son of a wealthy father, with whom he has quarreled. He comes to take a country charge. He falls in love with Mary, whose light heartedness is supposed to be the result of the evil nature of her mother who went to the city and came back with a little child and no wedding ring. With this premise we work the factors as follows: Ben. a young minister, has quarreled with his wealthy father because of his wish to enter the ministry. He takes charge of a country parish. He falls in love with Mary. Gossips warn him that she is the natural child of an unknown father. Despite this, Ben persists. Mary, hearing this, and knowing that his heart is set upon his career, leaves the town that she may not interfere with his prospects. Reading in his study Ben cames upon the Parable of the Lost Sheep. He accepts it as a message. Resigning his charge, he goes to the city to search for Mary. He finds her, but she thinks that by denying her love for him she can send him back to his pulpit. To further this scheme she pretends to an interest in the Junior Partner of the firm for which she works. She permits Ben to see her visit dance halls of questionable reputation. In one of these places Mary meets a man who is greatly at- tracted to her. As with the Junior Partner, she accepts his attentions. To his horror Ben discovers that his own father is his rival. The father, searching for new sensations and finding piquancy in the situation, proposes marriage as a last resort, in- tending that the marriage shall be a fictitious one. Mary tells Ben she is going to be married. Knowing his father's character, Ben seeks to dissuade her, but she is intent on what she supposes to be the salva- tion of his soul. She will not listen. Ben interrupts the false ceremony. There is a fight, during which Mary faints. In an endeavor to restore her, her dress is loosened. Around her neck is the locket that proves her to be the natural daughter of the old man and Ben's half sister. Shocked, the father suffers an apoplectic stroke. With his fortune Ben and Mary spend their live in good works. Punch in actipn, as has been shown, is the effect of action heightened by our knowledge of facts. We see a man standing on a cliff. If we know that the cliff has been mined for the purpose of destroying the man standing there, then the scene gains in punch and also in suspense, since we wait for the explosion we know must come. Suspense would not be possible did we not know the cliff to be mined, so in the last reduction it is punch and not suspense or rather punch aided by suspense that makes the scene of greater value than the mere fact of the man on the cliff. Punch in action differs from punch in plot in that it may not so much relate to the plot as to the moment, though of course it must have some relation to the plot or it would not belong in the play. Photoplay differs from fiction in that in fiction facts may be withheld until their telling will create the strongest possible effect. In photoplay the necessity for presenting facts in chronological order or else in vision makes it necessary to give the facts as they occur if we are to avoid lengthy explanation in vision or leader as the play draws to a climax. As a rule it is best to have the audience fully conversant with the facts and to get your interest from the punch in those facts rather than from the later surprise. A surprise will come as a shock and so heighten the effect, but as a rule it is more effective to permit the spec- tator to derive interest from knowledge of fact. 20. If we see Smith dining with a handsome woman, not too young. whom we know is not his wife, we may chuckle at his indiscretion. If she is known to us to be Smith's mother-in-law, whom he has never met, we get a continuous laugh, knowing that presently his sins will find him out. In this case surprise will bring one big laugh and some mildly interesting business. With the facts known there will be almost as hearty a laugh when Smith finds out and a lot of amusement in hitherto mildly interesting scenes. In one place we are shocked, along with Smith, at the discovery. In the other the big laugh that. we have been waiting for has come. We have been anticipating it all along. It has put punch into the earlier scenes. If the author is skillful he can have both his anticipation and his surprise. Given the story stated above and it is to be supposed that when Mrs. Smith and her mother compare notes things are going to be exceedingly warm for Smith. We see the two women together. We see Smith coming home. He enters the house. He kisses his wife. He turns and sees his companion of the lunch table. He wilts, but the mother remarks that she is glad to meet him at last, gives him the kiss she denied him in the restaurant and casually remarks that Mrs. Smith is looking well, but that she needs some new clothes. When Smith shucks some bills from his bank roll with trembling hands the situation is far more diveiting than if he had been chased out of the house with a broom. More punch can be added to the situation if Smith took the strange woman to lunch to forget a row he had had that morning when Mrs. Smith asked for one new dress. It is perfectly possible to write a mystery play so well planned that the spectator is kept in the dark until a couple of scenes and a leader, at the close make it all plain. It is possible, but it is difficult. It is generally easier to advise the spectator of facts as they occur and obtain the surprise from a new but easily explained development at the close. An excellent example of surprise punch is found in one of Irvin S. Cobb's stories printed in The Saturday Evening Post. An old man appears in a town. Presently a woman comes, attended by two negro servants. Daily she dogs his footsteps, heavily veiled, silent, implacable as Fate herself. The old man explains that she is a woman whom he refused to marry. For years she has followed him from town to town. Years go IV and the strain on the old man increases. At last he breaks. He suffers a stroke and death is close at hand. The woman unveils. His spurned love has long since died. It is her negro servant who has taken her place. The effect is almost a shock so suddenly does it come. 23. In the punch is found almost the entire reason for the sale of a play. Novelty of idea, strength of plot or other reason may be advanced, but they all reduce themselves to the fact that the story has a punch. There can be no novelty of idea without punch. There can be no strength of plot. • It all resolves itself into an ultimate matter of punch. No matter how perfect the technique of form, no matter what the sensational effects may be, it is punch alone that can make a sale; a plot with punch told in action with a punch. Given even the idea alone with a punch and it will be bought, but the play without punch that finds a sale is used only for a stop gap. As a matter of profit as well as a matter of pride study punch exhaustively. Look for it on the screen, study it in published synopses. 24. To the impatient it may seem that we are slow in coming to what is to them perhaps known as technique of the photoplay, but with this paragraph ends the discussion of the vital technique. The rest is a discussion of form, necessary if the plot is to be exposed to the greatest advantage, but the rest is to a very large extent mechani- cal and utterly useless unless one is able to evolve plots with punch. Before you pass on to the study of form,master plotting, for herein is to be found the secret of success.